


Currents

by nonakani



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonakani/pseuds/nonakani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette about familial momentum. (Kikue-centric)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Currents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [khepria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/khepria/gifts).



> (Beta'd by Kuruk - thanks again!)
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this idea - it's something I had been thinking about on my own, honestly, so it was nice to do something with it. I know it's pretty short, but I hope you enjoy it!

She had all of the recordings she had ever made of them organized by date, with Azusa's in one box and Asuka and Haruka's in another.

Kikue and her husband had discussed putting together a series of shelves to house these multitudes of memories, but space and the twins' growth had made it impossible. Regardless, she made sure that she could always easily access each and every one, no matter how their home shifted to accommodate changes in aesthetic and its occupants’ ages.

It was late, and she was awake far later than she should be, and later than anybody else in her apartment. But she still dug through one of the boxes, handling each disc with two hands and a careful grip even as they transitioned to the far bulkier VHS tapes near the bottom of the box. She piled them down at her knees so that she could easily return them to their place in their proper order.

The recording she chose was an earlier one of Azusa on his elementary school team, the tape itself meticulously dated. There were several games on it, she recalled; each tape was used as close to its entirety as she or her husband could manage, even back then.

With only the murmurs of nighttime insects and the glow of the television screen for company, she inserted the tape in to their aging VHS player, made sure the tape was fully rewound and the audio muted, and let it play.

 

 

(”Heeeeey, Azusa?"

Kikue’s grin only widened when her son raised his head to glare at her, still busy chewing his rice. There was always enough time for their usual rapport; it was so easy to egg him on that she could never quite help it.

Her son let the false annoyance leave him in a sigh as soon as his mouth was empty, his shoulders dropping. She wondered if that tenseness was even more exhausting after an entire day of practice. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I was wondering about something Mrs. Mihashi said to your coach a while ago.”

Azusa’s confusion showed on his face, as did his curiosity.

Kikue let her grin narrow somewhat along with his drooping shoulders. “She mentioned something about never seeing any of her son’s games in middle school?”

“Oh, yeah,” Azusa replied. “His team lost a lot in middle school, so apparently he would tell his relatives not to come and watch him play. Mihashi is...really shy. ...Well, maybe ’shy’ isn’t exactly the right word. But it seems like it might have made everything worse.

"Either way, his mom never saw him pitch in a real game until the Summer Tournament.”

“Ah, I see…”

Kikue returned to her food as her son did. She didn’t think that that answer would weigh on her at all like it was.)

 

 

She was so tired. She really needed to get to bed - she had to make breakfast tomorrow morning, had to wish her son well before he rushed off to practice, had to sit with her daughters as they ate - but there was some comfort in watching Azusa as a child again.

Her hand was so shaky back then. Kikue felt a smile tug at the edge of her mouth as the camcorder slipped in her hand several years in the past, almost cutting Azusa entirely out of frame. It was strange to watch such an old game with her far more experienced eyes; she knew much more now.

There were times when she wondered if she had ended up becoming even more invested in all of this than her son himself was. She loved the sport in its own right, now, and she wasn’t sure how exactly it happened. Passing interest in what her son liked and supporting what he did became a need to understand what her son understood, and somehow she ended up as a mother who read the sports news in the mornings, and who would talk about baseball with her peers even when they weren’t necessarily all members of the Parent’s Association, and who had these hours upon hours of recordings to fall back on as proof of her immersion.

Somehow, along the way, she had been caught up in the momentum of Azusa’s enthusiasm, and it became her’s, and that became her family’s. Asuka and Haruka showed an active interest in their brother’s activities despite their own, and Kikue still answered all of their questions about baseball as best she could, almost always with a smile. Even their father, who had no interest in baseball proper, still cared about what his son was doing.

Azusa’s practices now lasted all throughout the day and well in to the night, and Kikue was perfectly content with that. She would invariably watch and record his games as she always had. She had long since grown used to living and breathing baseball alongside her son.

So to never see him play at all? She could hardly wrap her head around the idea.

She couldn’t even remember what it was like to see Azusa play baseball for the first time. Mrs. Mihashi seeing her son at that game must have been just like that, whatever "that" was. Imagining her life without those constants left her with an uncomfortable disconnect.

She knew Azusa’s first game was safely tucked away in his box, all the way at the bottom, so deep that at night she dared not pull it out for fear of making too much noise. But that game, her first game -- /their/ first game -- happened. It existed, but there was a whole box of other games, too. She didn’t have to be satisfied with only a few memories. While Azusa was much older now, and they were often playfully at odds, not-so-secretly she was glad that he had retained his enthusiasm despite his occasionally-straying interest.

But, in retrospect, Kikue figured that she would have been swept up in whatever her son had been captured by, baseball or otherwise. She guessed it was more a matter of family, and less of invested interest.

Kikue yawned, and rested her head on her knees, both of them held close to her chest. Her toes dangled off the edge of her chair.

She would be sure to accompany Mrs. Mihashi to more of their children’s games, she decided. She wanted Mrs. Mihashi to see her son as much as Kikue had seen her’s. There was a lot of time to make up for, it seemed.

She let that thought become the current that carried her to sleep, right where she sat.


End file.
